


Scar Tissue

by gawainsgirdle



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Aftercare, Bloodplay, Established Relationship, Fluff, Fluff with a Sad Ending, Kink Negotiation, Knifeplay, M/M, Past Zack Fair/Aerith Gainsborough, Trans Cloud Strife, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:26:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24383518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gawainsgirdle/pseuds/gawainsgirdle
Summary: Several months into their relationship, Cloud realized he wanted to be with Zack for a long time. A very, very long time. Wear-your-name-on-my-back kinda long time.
Relationships: Zack Fair/Cloud Strife
Comments: 3
Kudos: 49





	Scar Tissue

**Author's Note:**

> This is set in a vague and unexplained AU where Zack and Cloud are adults when Zack is a First and Cloud is an infantryman. Be safe when you play with knives, kids.

Zack knew his way better around a blade than anyone Cloud’d ever met. Stupidly long sword or delicate knife, Zack handled each with blasé care. He knew Zack wouldn’t, couldn’t hurt him, not with something sharp and thin and steel.

Cloud remembered the weeks after Zack had first spotted “the prettiest set of spikes in the city” and started training Cloud in real swordplay, not the mimicry the infantry were taught by uninterested Thirds and gun-crazy lieutenants. Zack had taken his time with him, spent hours with his arms wrapped around Cloud’s and his chest fitted to Cloud’s back as their hands overlapped on the hilt of his sword. Zack’s breath had been warm on the nape of his neck. Zack’s thighs had been warmer as he’d led Cloud through the dance of combat: _never let both feet off the ground, shift your full weight, back and forward, always watch your partner, always move with them. Move with me._

Now, Zack’s thighs burned the prickling skin of Cloud’s hips as he straddled his back, Cloud lying on his stomach with his nose buried in Zack’s pillow. It smelled like sandalwood and strawberry hair gel and mako-sweetened sweat—disgusting and hot. Cloud’d accepted a long time ago that liking it made him as gross as Zack.

“Pretty boy,” Zack whispered, running a wide hand down Cloud’s bare back. “I can’t believe you’re letting me do this.”

Cloud swung his foot back try to kick his boyfriend, but his leg was too fucking short. “I asked you to do it.”

“I know.”

“Three times. In the past month.”

“I _know_.” Zack huffed out a sheepish laugh and lifted his hand off Cloud to scratch the back of his head. Cloud shivered as frigid air rushed to snatch back the warmth Zack had given him. “It’s just, I’ve never thought about it before and then you brought it up and I couldn’t _stop_ thinking about it, like, during drills and stuff. Angeal probably thinks I went crazy.”

Cloud snorted into the pillow and shifted his hips to buck Zack a little bit—or try to, the heavy motherfucker. Zack got the idea and graced Cloud with his touch again, this time both hands trailing ten searing fingertips up and down his spine.

“Angeal already thinks you’re crazy.”

“Yeah? He tell you that?” Zack’s thumbnails dug into his skin just slightly harder.

“Yep,” Cloud drawled, popping the P. “We eat lunch together all the time. Just me and him in his office.” He tried not to snicker when Zack’s hands came to an unsteady rest on his shoulder blades. “Yesterday, he got real close and asked if I knew anything about why you pitch a tent whenever y’all spar with knives—”

His scalp yelled as Zack snatched a chunk of Cloud’s hair and tugged, pulling his head up until his back bowed unnaturally and his neck clicked. Cloud bit his lip and hissed. Zack bent down, kissed the tip of his ear, and said, “Your bullshit is as cute as your face.” He let Cloud go; Cloud hid his smile in the pillow and relished the ache that was settling into his neck, his skull.

“I know you’re fishing for punishment,” Zack continued, sitting upright again and putting most of his weight on Cloud’s quickly tiring lower back, “but tonight ain’t about that. It’s about love!” Cloud laughed and earned himself a light swat on the ass. “Admit it, Spike. You love me, you wanna be with me forever, you doodle ‘Mr. Cloud Fair’ in your diary—”

“So humble.”

“ _And_ , most importantly, about a month ago you gave me a knife and asked me to carve my name into your back.” His voice softened, until he was about as quiet and contemplative as Cloud had ever heard him. “So excuse me if I go a little crazy about it.”

Cloud turned his head to the side so he could kind of look Zack in the eye. He was as stunning as ever: his bronze skin scarred but still soft; his torso littered with divots and moles that made him squirm when Cloud kissed them; so muscular but also, in that moment, so vulnerable. Cloud murmured, “You can still say no. If it’s bothering you so much.”

Zack shook his head, smiled his disgusting, puppy love smile that he weaponized against Cloud sometimes, and stroked Cloud’s cheek with the back of his knuckle. “It’s only been bothering me ‘cause it seems too good to be true.”

“That I’m a masochist?” He knew he was being facetious, trying to deflect from the heavy hammer and sparking anvil in his chest.

Very much used to Cloud and apparently in love with him, Zack’s smile didn’t waver. “That you wanna be mine.” His awed voice took on a different timbre for a moment, darker and rumbling: “That you know you are mine. And you’re gonna be, as long as I’m around.”

Cloud shivered and felt his cunt clench around nothing. This close to getting what he wanted, he let himself picture it: twisting in the mirror to see Zack’s name, wearing it in the communal gym showers; pulling his uniform shirt over his head and knowing it was still there and would be there through all the classes and drills and rare missions that sucked up his time; sitting up in bed in Midgar or Kalm or wherever one early morning, years in the future, looking out the window, and sighing when Zack woke up and nosed at the letters that he’d put there himself.

Sappy shit. If any of the kids back home knew what was going through Cloud’s head, they’d rub his face into the rubble and smear chocobo shit in his hair.

Fuck those kids.

He gave Zack his own kind of smile and breathed, “Yeah. I am.” Before Zack’s chin could tremble and his eyes could overswell with crocodile tears, Cloud quipped, “Or I will be if you ever get on with it.”

Zack laughed, reached behind him, and brandished the pocketknife that Cloud had given him. He’d bought one whose steel blade bore a winding pattern like a rippling pond—it was beautiful and special and strong—and that boasted a bright pink handle. Obviously, Zack deserved better than yet another black or gray knife.

“Hey, don’t rush the artist. This is delicate work.”

“At this rate, I’m gonna wrinkle and turn to dust before you open the damn blade.”

 _Click_. There it was, the thin edge Cloud’d thought about so much ever since he first saw it. A shining, dangerous peak. His skin pebbled over and something crawled around in his chest.

Zack watched him carefully, lamplight eyes slightly narrowed. “This is gonna hurt.”

“I know.” Cloud’s brows knitted together. “You hurt me worse before.”

“Yeah, well, I meant what I said earlier. This isn’t a masochistic thing.” Zack leaned down and kissed the top of Cloud’s spine. The cold point of the knife brushed his back, teased goosebumps from just beneath his left shoulder blade. “I don’t want you to be scared of me right now, or of this.” The tip scraped a circle into his skin; Cloud tensed as sparks shot down to root deep in his body, clinging to his tailbone.

“I’m not.”

“Then how do you feel?”

Cloud took his time. Closed his eyes, inhaled, sighed, felt his blood ebb within his veins and his muscles clench and relax.

“I feel… ready. And safe. And happy?”

Zack’s goopy smile returned. “Yeah?” He slowly stroked the blade up and down his back, stirring up those sparks again. Cloud nodded and let himself truly relax, put his brain away and become nothing but the man Zack loved.

“Cute.” Zack twisted the knife and drew squiggly lines everywhere, putting more and more pressure on the point. Cloud could picture the chaos of white lines that was filling in the space between his freckles. Zack always loved using Cloud’s body to play connect the dots. “You’re so pretty,” he sighed, and Cloud had no choice but to accept the compliment. “I love how much you trust me.”

Zack lingered for a couple minutes, letting silence cushion them as he gradually pushed harder on the knife, tested Cloud’s skin, how fragile it was, where it stretched with the tip and where it stayed taut, where it was so sensitive that Cloud couldn’t help squirming.

Finally, Zack took a rattling breath and said, “Okay, baby. First letter.” He chuckled and added, “Let’s see if I can remember how to spell my own name.”

Cloud slurred, “Dunno if you ever learned.” Zack flicked his ear, shifted his weight on Cloud’s hips as he leaned down, and drew the first line.

 _Scrape_. He started on the edge of Cloud’s left shoulder blade; _scrape_ ; the knife kissed the bone as he dragged it from left to right again with another _scrape_ ; and another, and another, its tip feeling sharper as he chipped away at Cloud’s skin until he drew blood. The electricity coiled around Cloud’s tailbone flared with each stroke. It tickled? Zack pushed harder, starting to carve instead of just cut. It tickled and it burned, the nerves in the rest of his body silent and sleeping as his focus narrowed to that thin, one inch horizontal line.

Zack’s thumb brushed over the line, gently rubbing the blood into his skin. He hummed, “How’re you doing, sweetheart?”

Cloud’s head swam. With one cheek flat on the pillow, he could see Zack’s black spikes out of the corner of his eye. “Good. Keep going.”

Zack pressed a kiss to Cloud’s nape and scratched a diagonal line this time, pulling his skin down and to the left. It moved with the blade, burned as it stretched over his rib, until Zack laid a hot hand on his spine and pulled his skin taut. The knife’s slow carve through each layer of flesh sent more flickers of light through his body, coalescing in the small of his back. It felt bizarre, confusing, to feel so much from just millimeters of metal. Zack’s hand grounded him, a firm and steady touch to balance his short, precise slices. When he lifted his free hand to start sketching the bottom line of the Z, Cloud whined.

Zack paused. “Yeah? You okay down there?”

Cloud stretched his arms above his head, breathed deeply, and let himself tremble. Zack clicked his tongue and rooted his fingers in Cloud’s hair. He knew Zack was seconds away from cooing like a mother hen, so he cleared his throat and said, “I’m okay. It’s just… I need you to…” He squinted through the haze swirling behind his eyes. “Can you keep your hand on me? On my back.”

Zack tugged on Cloud’s earlobe and stroked the notch where his jaw met his skull. “Aw, you feeling squirmy?”

“Kinda.”

“Mkay. I can do that.” He planted his palm on the center of Cloud’s back, just below the fresh cuts, and spread his fingers as wide as he could. “Any excuse to touch you.”

Cloud arched into his palm and laughed. “You don’t need an excuse.”

“Sure, I do. Every time I touch you matters, right?” He stroked the knife across Cloud’s ribs, stinging the wounds he’d already cut.

He shifted his weight and carved one hot, straight line after another, another, worrying at the same patch of skin to make sure Cloud bled enough to scar. Each pass, he dug the point in a little deeper. He leaned harder on Cloud’s back with his other hand, pinning him to the mattress in a way that made his clit throb between flashes of pain. It came and left in waves, fading as he breathed out and flooding back as he breathed in. He tried not to hold his breath; he listened to Zack’s careful, measured breathing, warm and stirring the short hairs at his nape.

Zack kissed away the blood from the single letter he’d carved. Cloud shuddered and nuzzled the pillow to try to escape the feeling. Zack’s hand stroked a searing line from the small of his back to the top of his spine; his fingers crept around either side of Cloud’s throat, really and truly pinning him.

“Good boy.” He sounded so happy, so grateful. Cloud hissed through his teeth and flexed his legs together. “You’re perfect. You ready for the next one?”

Cloud nodded, remembering how much farther Zack had to go. Three lines done out of eleven.

The A’s left diagonal stem tugged at his skin so that Zack had to pull it taut again, this time pushing with enough of his weight that Cloud could barely breathe. Scant huffs of oxygen fogged up his mind; he felt safe, smothered, held, cared for, like prey that had given up. Zack’s thumb rubbed wide stripes across his shoulder, soothing him as he finished the stem and cut the short crossbar.

By the time he’d etched the bottom line of the C into the exact center of Cloud’s back, the knife tripping over his vertebrae with each pass, the sparks that had clung to Cloud’s tailbone had slithered downward and taken root in his cunt. He wanted to rock against the bed, but Zack was too heavy, thick muscle far outmatching Cloud’s growing strength in a way that dizzied him.

Zack swiped through the blood and stuck his thumb in his mouth. He breathed deeply once, twice, rolled his head until his neck clicked, and ran his blunt nails down the side of Cloud’s chest. He laughed when Cloud shuddered and tried to twist away.

“I can feel you trying to move your hips,” he said, and Cloud blushed. “You want something?”

Cloud hid his face in the pillow and muttered, “Keep going.”

“Okay, baby.” Zack pecked a cluster on freckles on the tip of his shoulder. “Almost done.”

Zack scratched the K’s long stem into his back as tenderly as ever, scraping at the top layer of skin until Cloud felt blood drip down his back. He gripped the top of the mattress just to feel anything other than the knife’s awful peak and his thighs’ damp trembling. Partway through carving the top leg of the K, Zack’s hand slid back and forth between the small of Cloud’s back and the top of Cloud’s ass, right where Zack straddled him. It was too much. Trapped, raw, owned, burning both inside and outside, he let shivers overtake his body.

“Hey, hey,” Zack murmured. He set the knife down on the bedside table. “Are you okay? Do you wanna stop?”

Nearly overwhelmed, Cloud gasped and shook his head. They were so close, he was so close to getting what he’d wanted for months.

“Do you have any words?” Zack waited patiently while Cloud tested how heavy his tongue felt in his mouth. He shook his head again. “Okay. I’m gonna finish. Just one little line and then we’re good. Knock on the headboard if you want me to stop.”

Cloud inhaled. Zack’s calloused hand rubbed his lower back in circles. Exhaled. The knife’s tip skated across his back again. Inhaled. He flinched as it traced over the center of the K, where each line met. Exhaled. Zack started whispering praise that he could barely understand, _good boy, gorgeous, so sweet_. Inhaled. Blood trickled over each goosebump, a small tongue lapping at his skin. Exhaled. Breathed. Breathed.

The knife clicked on the bedside table. Zack lifted off Cloud’s aching hips; he almost started crying when Zack walked away. He hurried back with a damp towel thrown over his shoulder, so he could grab Cloud by the waist and lift him off his stomach. Cloud blinked and suddenly he was sitting on Zack’s lap, Zack’s tan arms wrapped around him. He was stroking Cloud’s wounds with the towel, wiping away the blood and plasma and sweat and broken skin. Stroking his own name. _Zack_ , a scar he would carry forever.

Cloud couldn’t help it. He clutched Zack as tight as he could and scraped his nails down Zack’s back and cried.

“Shh, it’s over. You did it.” Zack kissed his temple over and over. “I’m so proud of you!”

Cloud nodded and choked on a sob. Faces flashed through his mind, his mother’s, Tifa’s, every drawling asshole and steel-fisted bully, everyone who ever made him feel like he’d always be alone. He tucked his face under Zack’s chin and traced into his chest, _Thank you_. Zack laughed, sounding a little choked up himself.

“No, thank you. I love you so much, I can’t believe you let me do that.” He laid his cheek on the crown of Cloud’s head and soothed the shudders from his body. After a quiet couple of minutes, Cloud cleared his throat and pulled away to look at Zack. He squinted in fake irritation.

“You made me cry. I gotta break up with you now.”

Zack barked out a laugh and knocked his forehead against Cloud’s. “Hey, don’t joke about that. You’re stuck with me now.” He wiggled his eyebrows. “I _own_ you now.”

“Sure you do.”

“Tomorrow I’m gonna write ‘Property of’ on your back.”

Cloud rolled his eyes, cupped Zack’s jaw, and kissed him, salt on his tongue and dew dripping down his back.

-

That goddamn poison-tipped sword. Aerith fumed as Barret carried Cloud away from the field where they’d just emerged victorious, barely, and propped him against a rotting log. She thanked Barret with a hand on his forearm and turned her full attention to Cloud, whose head had lolled back and whose bright, blank eyes stared at her through his eyelashes.

“Okay, Cloud, it’s going to be okay,” she said. She slipped one of the swirling green materia from her staff and gripped it tight.

She ran her eyes over him, looking for worse injuries: sliced arteries, places where his abdomen could be swollen with internal bleeding. He huffed and quirked his head at her.

“It’s just the poison. Alright.” She bit her lip and rubbed her thumb over the materia. “I’m sorry, Cloud, I have to turn you over and tear your shirt open.” His brows knitted together. He let out an empty, rattling breath. Aerith grimaced, but set down the materia and pulled on his shoulder anyway, until he slumped over the log with his back to her.

“They got you in the spine, and if I don’t act soon it’s going to spread farther than I can stop, so I have to—” She inhaled deeply. She thought of the Planet, how sweet the rain tasted this far from a reactor, how happy her mother had been the first time she’d grown a sunflower to its full height, how the Lifestream’s voices sounded when they whispered to her now and again that Cloud was very important, Cloud would help them.

Aerith stole the knife from the holster on Cloud’s belt and sliced his shirt down the middle. The sword had grazed just above his left kidney; the skin around the wound had puckered and begun leaking thick, green trails of pus. It hadn’t spread too far, just a couple inches where his veins bulged blue against his skin. It smelled worse than any slum gutter.

She grasped the materia again and held it to the wound, shushing when Cloud groaned. Summoning her mother’s energy from her core to her palm was as simple and aching as ever. She ran her eyes over the rest of his bare back, hunched and bruised as it was. He was too, too thin.

Her materia had almost sucked every drop of poison from Cloud’s body when she spotted it: four red, faded letters etched between his shoulder blades, in the exact center. _Zack_.

Tremors overtook her. She knew he had Zack’s sword. She’d intuited that Cloud was the man he’d told her about during their lazy lunches on the floor of her church, after they’d broken up. She knew Cloud’s brain was so fractured that he’d forgotten Zack entirely.

Here he was. Carved into Cloud’s skin, where he couldn’t see it, where he wouldn’t think to look. Just scar tissue.

Aerith swallowed tears and put her materia back in her staff. She wished she had a needle and thread to cover Cloud back up. She settled for tipping his head back to spill a potion into his mouth, whispering _I’m sorry_ to nobody who could listen, and leaving to get Barret.


End file.
